Editorial: Fraud on the Pike

Friday

Sep 28, 2007 at 12:01 AMSep 28, 2007 at 1:37 PM

The Mass. Turnpike's resident discount program was a dubious political deal from the beginning, reducing $3 tunnel tolls to 40 cents for residents of select Boston neighborhoods. Given human nature and the Pike's history of cronyism and loose accounting, it's no surprise that simple fraud has infected the program.

The MetroWest Daily News

The Mass. Turnpike's resident discount program was a dubious political deal from the beginning, reducing $3 tunnel tolls to 40 cents for residents of select Boston neighborhoods. Given human nature and the Pike's history of cronyism and loose accounting, it's no surprise that simple fraud has infected the program.

An internal audit announced this week gives an idea how much fraud. More than 17 percent of those registered for the discount on the Sumner and Ted Williams tunnels aren't eligible, the audit found. They either had moved from the eligible neighborhoods, never lived there to begin with, or illegally transferred FastLane transponders from an eligible vehicle to an ineligible one.

One limo company, the audit found, saved more than $2,000 a month by moving a transponder from a resident car to an ineligible commercial limo.

The Turnpike Authority vowed to do a better job of policing the program. "The resident discount program remains important, but we won't allow it to be abused," said Mary Jane O'Meara, acting executive director of the Pike.

Now wait a minute, Ms. O'Meara. Why should the resident discount program even exist?

The pretext for this giveaway was that these neighborhoods would suffer greatly during the construction of the Big Dig. To some extent they did, though project managers made a long list of concessions - costing millions of dollars - to mitigate its impacts. The Big Dig promised, for instance, to hose off the tires of every vehicle leaving every construction site, in order to avoid tracking dirt on to the pristine streets of South Boston, East Boston and the North End.

Whatever those hardships, the Boston neighborhoods are now seeing the benefits $14.8 billion in public money have bought. Through traffic has been taken off neighborhood streets, the South Boston Seaport district has a direct connection to Logan Airport and the Pike, the hulking Southeast Expressway has come down, replaced by the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the most expensive city park ever built - boosting property values on every side.

Boston politicians squeezed all kinds of concessions out of the Big Dig when it was seen as a giant pot of federal money. But the federal money has dried up and, thanks largely to the Big Dig, the Pike is gushing red ink. Pike toll-payers are facing a huge toll increase in January to pay for Boston's fancy highways along with perks like the $5 million-per-year resident discount program, deep discounts for customers of North End merchants at the Parcel 7 garage and the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

If the new Pike management is serious about cutting waste, it should begin immediately divesting itself of real estate and commitments unconnected to its mission of maintaining specific highways.

Getting rid of the resident discount program won't be easy. It was created by state law, with no expiration date, and it's hard to see House Speaker Sal DiMasi, D-North End, taking those 40-cent tunnel tolls away from his lucky constituents.

But if it can't be fixed legislatively, the Pike should look at other options, including expanding the program so that all drivers with Mass. transponders can get the reduced rate. When that creates a deficit, they should send DiMasi and the Legislature the bill.